The Daily Kos Elections Morning Digest is compiled by David Nir, Jeff Singer, Stephen Wolf, Carolyn Fiddler, and Matt Booker, with additional contributions from David Jarman, Steve Singiser, Daniel Donner, James Lambert, David Beard, and Arjun Jaikumar.
Leading Off
● KY-Gov: On Tuesday night, Kentucky’s gubernatorial primaries yielded much closer-than-expected battles on both sides, with Republican Gov. Matt Bevin holding off a minor challenger by a desultory margin and state Attorney General Andy Beshear narrowly capturing the Democratic nod over a pair of rivals.
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Beshear had taken 38% of the vote when we put the Digest to bed with 95% of precincts reporting, edging state House Minority Leader Rocky Adkins, who was at 32%, and former state Auditor Adam Edelen, who finished in third with 28%. Beshear began the race as the frontrunner, in part thanks to his famous family name—his father, Steve Beshear, served two terms as governor from 2007 to 2015—and limited polling (including one survey from Edelen) showed him with a wide lead.
But the last poll we saw was conducted a month before the primary, an eternity in politics. Edelen, who was aided by major cash infusions from his wealthy running mate, Gill Holland, and Holland’s family, went sharply negative against Beshear in the final weeks and may have damaged him.
Adkins, meanwhile, avoided the scrum and ran up the score in his home base in rural eastern Kentucky, likely by appealing to more conservative voters (Adkins calls himself “pro-life” while Beshear and Edelen support reproductive rights). In the end, though, while Beshear’s margin was much smaller than those long-ago polls suggested, he still emerged the victor.
As for Bevin, he entered the race as the most unpopular governor in the country and it showed: He beat state Rep. Robert Goforth, who self-funded his campaign with some $750,000 but otherwise attracted little support, by just a 52-39 spread.
While Bevin is the first Republican governor in state history to preside over a Republican-run legislature, he’s spent most of his time in office feuding with lawmakers: Last year, most notably, legislators overrode a Bevin veto of new education funding after a punishing teachers strike engulfed the state. Bevin’s chaotic tenure has left him despised not only by Democrats and independents, but even by many GOP voters, who gave him a very weak 52-34 favorability score in a PPP poll earlier this month.
However, Kentucky is deeply conservative—it remains one of Donald Trump's best states—and that may be all Bevin needs to survive, especially now that he's gotten Trump's seal of approval. Daily Kos Elections currently rates this race Lean Republican, meaning we think that Bevin has the advantage. But we're still five months from Election Day, and the real attacks have yet to fly, so a win for Beshear is still very much a possibility.
Senate
● IA-Sen: Linn County Supervisor Stacey Walker is the latest Democrat to express interest in taking on Republican Sen. Joni Ernst next year, saying he will decide this month. This isn't the first time that Walker has thought of running for higher office, and he considered a campaign for the House last cycle before ultimately opting to seek re-election. If he joins the race and beats Ernst, Walker would be Iowa's first black member of Congress.
● MA-Sen: State Attorney General Maura Healey once again hasn't ruled out running for Senate next year in the Democratic primary against incumbent Ed Markey, saying she has "no plans to run," which isn't quite a no. However, she sounds more interested in running for governor in 2022, especially if popular Republican Gov. Charlie Baker retires and doesn't attempt to become the first governor to win three consecutive four-year terms.
House
● CA-10: Shortly after filing paperwork to run, Republican San Joaquin County Supervisor Bob Elliott has announced he's switching from a campaign for state Senate to a race against freshman Democratic Rep. Josh Harder in this swingy district. Elliott, who is also a retired Army colonel, says that after he kicked off his state Senate bid, national Republicans quickly recruited him to switch races. Elliott joins 2018 GOP candidate Ted Howze in the top-two primary to face Harder.
● CO-06: Business owner and former Republican state Rep. Phil Covarrubias recently said he's "about a foot" away from kicking off a campaign against first-term Democratic Rep. Jason Crow. However, it's unclear just how strong of a candidate Covarrubias would be after he was defeated for renomination last year by a 62-38 rout in his primary to seek a second term in the state House. Nevertheless, Covarrubias contended that being a Latino from a working-class background could help him win over voters who typically support Democrats in this suburban Denver district, which has a sizable Latino population.
So far, Crow has yet to draw a noteworthy GOP challenger in Colorado's 6th District, which has been moving away from Team Red in recent years. The seat went from 52-47 Obama to 50-41 Clinton, and Crow unseated GOP incumbent Mike Coffman last year by a wide 54-43 margin. Coffman quickly decided to run for mayor of Aurora this year rather than seek a rematch with Crow.
● FL-26: Former Republican Rep. Carlos Curbelo says he'll decide this summer whether to seek a rematch against Democratic Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, but he may have trouble in the primary judging by his latest statements. Indeed, Curbelo took time to praise Michigan Rep. Justin Amash as an "example of everything that's right with Washington" after Amash recently became the first congressional Republican to call for Trump's impeachment, although Curbelo says he personally has no "firm opinion" on impeachment.
While that position may play well for a Republican in a general election in this 56-41 Clinton district, GOP primary voters are likely a different story. Businesswoman Irina Vilariño is already in the race and has been touted by the national party. After it came to light last week that she had previously shared a racist "birther" meme on social media along with other conspiracy theories, Trump-supporting primary voters may opt for someone like Vilariño who is more in the Trump mold than Curbelo.
● GA-07: The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that Republican state Sen. Renee Unterman will likely enter the primary for this open seat in early June. Furthermore, they relay that Georgia Republicans' new law that bans almost all abortions after six weeks, when many women don't even know they are pregnant, will be a central focus of her campaign after she was a main sponsor in the legislature. That could help Unterman win the Republican nomination, but it seems unlikely to be an asset in the general election in a highly educated suburban district that is rapidly diversifying.
● IA-03: On Monday, Sen. Chuck Grassley endorsed former Rep. David Young in the GOP primary to take on freshman Democratic Rep. Cindy Axne. Young served as Grassley's chief of staff before he was elected to the House.
● NJ-07: GOP Assemblyman Erik Peterson said Monday that he's still not ruling out a bid against freshman Democratic Rep. Tom Malinowski even though state Senate Minority Leader Tom Kean Jr. is already in. Peterson added that he wants to wait until this November's state election is done and "then I'll think about it a little bit, make a decision at that point."
● TX-10: Attorney Shannon Hutcheson announced on Monday that she would join the Democratic primary to take on veteran GOP Rep. Michael McCaul, and Politico writes that national Democrats "believe she can be a strong fundraiser."
This gerrymandered seat, which stretches from Austin east into the Houston area, backed Trump 52-43, and Democrats haven't made a serious effort to win it in a long time. However, Team Red had a rough ride here in 2018: McCaul fended off Democrat Mike Siegel by a surprisingly close 51-47 margin, and Beto O'Rourke narrowly carried this district 49.6-49.5 against GOP Sen. Ted Cruz. Siegel is running again, and Pritesh Gandhi, an assistant professor at Austin's Dell Medical School, is also seeking the Democratic nod.
Mayoral
● Denver, CO Mayor: With two weeks to go before the June 4 general election and with ballots being mailed to voters this week, Mayor Michael Hancock is going up with the first negative TV spot of the race. The narrator hits urban planner Jamie Giellis, who like Hancock is a Democrat, and declares that "like Trump, (Giellis) called undocumented immigrants criminals." The commercial then shows footage of Giellis saying, "Yes, we won't tolerate crime or criminal activities, we will comply with authorities, we will comply with ICE."
The Denver Post's Andrew Kenney notes that this clip leaves out the rest of the candidate's quote, where Giellis continued saying "but immigrants and people coming into our community do provide rich opportunity and diversity that we see other cities really working with." Kenney also points out that, despite what the spot says, Giellis did not call undocumented immigrants "criminals." Giellis referred to "illegal actions," but Kenney writes that she "did not say that undocumented immigrants as a group are criminals."
Hancock's commercial goes on to take advantage of two recent stories that have been unwelcome distractions for Giellis. First, it shows a clip of her mistakenly suggesting that the acronym for the NAACP stands for "National African American" before she's told she's wrong. Giellis then is shown laughing and she asks, "You going to test me on this?"
Last week, Giellis did indeed unsuccessfully struggle to remember what NAACP stands for. The following day, she said that she remembered that the civil rights organization's name stands for "National Association for the Advancement of Colored People" just after the interview ended, and she apologized for her "momentary lapse."
The ad's narrator then accuses Giellis of "deleting racially incentive tweets to hide her past views." That's a reference to a 2009 Giellis tweet that surfaced last week where she asked, "Here's a question: Why do so many cities feel it necessary to have a 'Chinatown'?" Giellis quickly deleted her Twitter and Instagram accounts, saying she was "coming into the realization that we're a public figure, and it was a private account."
● Fresno, CA Mayor: On Monday, Republican Mayor Lee Brand announced that he would not seek re-election next year, a move that could give Democrats a better shot to finally win control of city hall.
Since moving to its current system for electing mayors more than 20 years ago, Fresno's been governed by an uninterrupted string of Republicans. Back in 2016, Brand continued the streak by defeating a Democratic opponent 51-49 even as Hillary Clinton was carrying the city 57-37. However, shifting demographics have made the city bluer—Democrats now outnumber Republicans in voter registrations—and last year, for the first time in a decade, voters elected a Latino majority to the city council (about half the city identifies as Latino).
The city will hold its nonpartisan primary in March, the same day as California's presidential primary. If no one takes a majority of the vote, the general election will take place in November. Democrat Andrew Janz, a prosecutor who held Republican Rep. Devin Nunes to by far the tightest re-election of his career last year in California's 22nd District, kicked off his mayoral bid weeks ahead of Brand's retirement announcement. Fresno City Councilmember Luis Chávez, who ran for the state Senate as a Democrat in 2014, also entered the race right after Brand exited it.
Fresno Police Chief Jerry Dyer, who is retiring in October, also confirmed he was interested in a mayoral bid. A Fresno Bee op-ed last month also identified Dyer as a Republican who could keep city hall red, and he indeed sounds quite conservative. Last year, Dyer endorsed Democrat Antonio Villaraigosa in the top-two primary for governor, but he said it was because he believed the former Los Angeles mayor "understands the importance of keeping those individuals in prison, when they need to be kept in prison."
● Kansas City, MO Mayor: On behalf of the local political newsletter the Missouri Scout, the GOP pollster Remington Research is out with another survey of the June 18 general election. They give Quinton Lucas a 38-30 lead over fellow City Councilor Jolie Justus, which is almost exactly the same as the 38-31 Lucas lead they found last month. We've seen no other polls of the contest between Justus, who has the backing of termed-out Mayor Sly James, and Lucas, who is more skeptical of the status quo.
